


going around in circles

by defractum (nyargles)



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Domestic Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 09:13:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11940981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyargles/pseuds/defractum
Summary: Summer in Columbia is a new kind of torture.It’s probably a little flippant to say, given he’s been through actual torture, twice, but Neil is lying on the floor of the living room, watching the ceiling fan rotate clockwise and wondering if actual hell is this hot.





	going around in circles

**Author's Note:**

> This is my AFTG Exchange pinch-hit for cielleinthazure for the Summer round.

Summer in Columbia is a new kind of torture.

It’s probably a little flippant to say, given he’s been through actual torture, twice, but Neil is lying on the floor of the living room, watching the ceiling fan rotate clockwise and wondering if actual hell is this hot.

He’s lying on the floor because it’s hardwood, which means it’s the coolest place in the house apart from the kitchen floor, and Kevin’s already lying on the kitchen floor.

“Drama queen,” says Andrew from where he’s sitting, normally, on the sofa.

“You’re used to this,” says Neil, whose thoughts have now moved on to wondering what the ceiling fan is actually _for_. It’s not like it actually creates a breeze strong enough to do anything. His t-shirt is clinging in awkward places and it feels like his deodorant’s just melted off him. His armbands are damp through and starting to irritate his skin. His sheared off jeans are too heavy, and what had started out as the refreshing feeling of his bare calves against the cool floorboards has turned into Neil’s legs slowly sticking to the ground and making wet ‘shlup’ noises when he pulls them up.

Neil rolls just his head sideways to look at Andrew. He’s wearing his usual ensemble of black t-shirt, black jeans and armbands, but even he has sweat beaded at his hairline, his hair slightly damp and curling from it already. He’s reading from one of his textbooks and his nose wrinkles slightly when he reaches up to scratch it.

“Stop staring,” he tells Neil, without looking up from his book.

Neil blinks. He’s feeling so sluggish that he’s barely aware that he’d been staring at all.

It’s his lack of reply that makes Andrew put his book down and look at him properly. He sighs, and leaves the book on the sofa as he heads into the kitchen. He hears him tell Kevin to move and Kevin grunt as he ignores Andrew and Andrew steps on him on his way to the sink. There’s splashing for a moment, and then Andrew comes back out.

He’s splashed water onto his face, his hair now slightly slicked back from where he ran his hands through his hair. Neil likes it. It’s very different to what he normally does with his hair. Andrew kneels on the floor next to him and Neil reaches up to catch a couple of the rivulets running down his face; Andrew merely raises an eyebrow.

He’s holding a damp flannel, which he folds and puts over Neil’s forehead. It’s deliciously cool; Neil hums in satisfaction as droplets trickle down his temples, and leans his face into Andrew’s palm. Andrew lets him for a moment before pushing himself back up.

A door from down the hallway clicks open as Andrew tucks himself back up onto the sofa. Nicky stalks in, one hand fisted into the front of his t-shirt as he flaps it vigorously and the other holding his phone. “Okay, so, someone’s coming out to fix the aircon Thursday. We just have to survive until then.”

“That’s two days from now,” says Neil, absolute proof that he has got far too used to living with modern amenities. Half the motels he shared with Mary barely had functioning lighting, let alone aircon.

“I know, right?!” Nicky throws his hands into the air. Andrew lived with this man for a whole three years before he even met Neil, so Neil has no idea why Andrew thinks _he’s_ a drama queen. “Anyway, are you coming?”

“Coming where?” asks Neil, as Andrew says ‘No’ at the same time.

“The pool. I’m not sitting around in this heat all day,” says Nicky. “I was saying earlier there’s one nearby.”

He heads into the kitchen to grab a glass, and then walks back out again. “Why is Kevin doing crunches on the kitchen floor?”

Neil grunts vaguely. “S’cooler.”

“That explains nothing.”

A pool does sound nice. Lots of cold water. But Neil has several problems with pools, the first being that he doesn’t actually know how to swim. The second being that he doesn’t have any trunks with him, and the third being that going to the pool would involve being mostly naked in front of complete strangers.

Neil’s just about got used to getting changed in front of the Foxes, and of course Abby and Andrew have seen him with his top off completely (though for very different reasons) but it’s different with strangers. He already fields enough looks about the scars on his face, but his body is covered in even more of them, and it’s not like he can wear his armbands into the water either. He flicks a quick glance at Andrew, who’s gone back to his book; Andrew wouldn’t take his off either.

“We’re going to stay here,” he tells Nicky.

“Suit yourself.” Nicky shrugs, and pops his head back into the kitchen to tell Kevin.

Kevin meanders out a second later, and waits for Andrew to look up at him. They exchange one of their looks – Neil is getting better at interpreting these. Kevin shrugs eventually.

“I’ll go. I need to get some exercise in before we completely atrophy over summer,” he says, like Nicky didn’t just find him doing crunches on the kitchen floor.

Nicky mutters something about him sucking all the joy out of lounging by the pool, and Neil mentally puts Kevin just below Nicky in terms of drama-queenliness. It’s good for Kevin though, to get used to doing things alone, or at least without his designated pair.

They disappear into the bedrooms and come out, taking Aaron with them. When the door shuts behind them, the house is a muffled silence, heavy with the humid air.

Neil remembers when he used to be hot, crammed in overcrowded cities and being pushed along by the flow of pedestrians, and Mary had always made him wear oversized long-sleeved tops to cover himself in public. He’d always get to wherever they were staying and duck into the bathroom, strip off and douse himself in cold water, pulling his clothes back on over his wet skin to keep himself cool for as long as possible.

It’s a strange memory to crop up now, Neil muses. He’s allowed himself to get soft in the few years since she’s died – back then, he wouldn’t have dared show how uncomfortable he was feeling. 

Neil raises his arms, and looks at his armbands for a long moment before peeling them off. They’re soaked through with sweat. It’s not like Aaron, Kevin and Nicky haven’t see the scars before, striped and circular in their own morbid pattern, but all three of them are bad at hiding their instinctual flinch every time they see. He drops them onto the floor beside him, and rubs his forearms dry.

He wriggles out of his t-shirt too, using it to swipe the worst of the sweat off himself, and then puts it underneath him before lying back on the floor again – he doesn’t want the rest of him to stick like his legs have been.

He feels a lot better.

Neil watches the strangely hypnotic movement of the ceiling fan. There’s a spiderweb in the corner of the ceiling too, he notices. “You can cool down too now, if you want.”

“Oh, can I?” That might once have been a conversation killer, Andrew cutting down an obvious remark, but now it’s more a mockery of that, a fond remembrance of those days more than anything.

It takes a moment, but Andrew leaves his book on the sofa and joins Neil on the floor, Neil shuffling over obligingly to make room for all the width of Andrew’s shoulders as they bump against his. He can feel the heat radiating off Andrew’s body now they’re this close.

“Wow gee, what a view,” says Andrew, deadpan as always. Neil snorts as his eyes track how the fan’s little dangling string thing rotates in irregular ellipses, but when he lolls his head to look at Andrew, it’s him Andrew’s looking at.

He catches the smile that blossoms over his face too late; Andrew’s already reached over to poke one finger into Neil’s cheek. “Stop that.”

“Can’t,” says Neil.

“Try harder.”

“Don’t want to,” says Neil, feeling slightly giddy. He turns his head to scrape his stubble against Andrew’s palm. “You like it.”

Andrew doesn’t deny it, and Neil rolls his body towards him like a sunflower towards the sun. It’s not as sappy as it sounds – his elbow clacks against the floor and his t-shirt is sticking to his back – but he curls up on his side and lets Andrew just rest his hand against Neil’s jaw.

His face is still blank, but Andrew’s thumb betrays him as it strokes across Neil’s cheek.  His hand is hot against Neil’s face, too hot really to add to his body heat, but it’s bearable when it’s Andrew. He presses a kiss to the inside of his wrist, and then his forearm where the faint white lines criss-cross, and then the crook of his elbow, and Andrew watches him with steady eyes.

“It’s too hot to do this right now,” Andrew says, pulling his arm back.

Half of Neil’s body is disappointed – the other half agrees. Neil himself just hums, and watches Andrew’s thick eyelashes flutter when he blinks.

“So, you should turn the ceiling fan on the right way first,” Andrew informs him. Neil frowns at him, then the ceiling fan, confused. “It only makes the room cooler if it’s going anti-clockwise.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://www.defractum.tumblr.com)!


End file.
